The present invention generally relates to networks and more specifically to compensating for performance degradation of an application session.
Routers in a network forward packets from one network component to another network component. A network component is a computer (e.g., a router or switch) that communicates over the network. Each router is typically connected to several network components via router links. If a particular router link to a network component is overwhelmed for any reason, the traffic has to be rerouted to the network component (e.g., another router) via another link. A link may be overwhelmed because of a legitimate traffic increase or because of an attack aimed at disrupting communication.
Existing solutions to an overwhelmed router link is to use traffic engineering (i.e., mechanisms or strategies used to ease router link traffic) and quality of service (QoS) mechanisms (i.e., a guaranteed throughput level for the link) on each link. These solutions, however, are operationally expensive because they add significant overhead to router operation.
There is no way to “selectively” reroute traffic belonging to particular links. In particular, routing is typically performed by the destination address of a packet. Packets having the same destination address conventionally follow the same paths (i.e., links). Therefore, there is no easy way to route traffic having the same destination address using different links. There remains a need to selectively and efficiently reroute traffic traveling over network links.